Winter/Spring - The clone army of foreign policy "experts" from conservative foreign policy outfits nobody ever heard of before suddenly appear on all the cable news programs all the time, frowning furiously and expressing concerns about the "grave threat" that Iran poses. Never before heard of Iranian exile group members start appearing regularly, talking about their role in the nuclear program and talking up Iran's human rights violations.

Spring/Summer - "Liberal hawks" point out that all serious people understand the serious threat posed by serious Iran, and while they acknowledge grudgingly that the Bush administration has fucked up everything it touches, they stress, and I mean stress, that we really must support the Bush administration's serious efforts to deal with the serious problem and that criticisms of such serious approaches to a serious problem are highly irresponsible and come only from irrational very unserious Bush haters who would rather live in Iran than the U.S.

Late Summer - Rumsfeld denies having an Iran war plan "on his desk." He refuses to answer if he has one "in his file cabinet." Andy Card explains that you don't roll out new product until after labor day.

Early Fall - Bush suddenly demands Congress give him the authority to attack Iran to ensure they "disarm." Some Democrats have the temerity to ask "with what army?" Marshall Wittman and Peter Beinart explain that courageous Democrats will have the courageous courage to be serious and to confront the "grave threat" with seriousness and vote to send other peoples' kids off to war, otherwise they'll be seen as highly unserious on national security. Neither enlists.

Late October - Despite the fact that all but 30 Democrats vote for the resolution, Republicans run a national ad campaign telling voters that Democrats are objectively pro-Ahmadinejad. Glenn Reynolds muses, sadly, that Democrats aren't just anti-war, but "on the other side." Nick Kristof writes that liberals must support the war due to Ahmadinejad's opposition to gay rights in Iran.

Election Day - Democrats lose 5 seats in the Senate, 30 in the House. Marshall Wittman blames it on the "pro-Iranian caucus."

The Day After Election Day - Miraculously we never hear another word about the grave Iranian threat. Peter Beinart writes a book about how serious Democrats must support the liberation of Venezuela and Bolivia.

I think this article in today's Washington Post makes clear that the issue of George Bush's missing-in-action status during the Vietnam War is now relevant once again.

We are a nation at war and it is unnacceptable that there be any doubt in our troops' minds as to whether their commander in chief is a traitor and a coward. Again, the Washington Post article makes clear that the issue as to whether George Bush, standing before the American people as a holier-than-thou spokesman for the war in Iraq, is truly fit to be such a spokesman, let alone the commander in chief of our brave men and women in uniform.

Our troops deserve nothing less than the truth. Is our commander in chief a coward?

Pakistani officials on Saturday angrily condemned a purported CIA airstrike meant to target al-Qaida's No. 2 man, saying he wasn't there and "innocent civilians" were among at least 17 men, women and children killed in a village near the Afghan border.

Thousands of tribesmen staged protests and a mob set fire to the office of a U.S.-backed aid agency as Pakistan's people and government showed increasing frustration over a recent series of suspected U.S. attacks along the frontier that appear aimed at Islamic militants.

Survivors in Damadola denied militants were in their hamlet, but there were news reports quoting unidentified Pakistani officials as saying up to 11 extremists were believed among the dead.

A Pakistani intelligence officer told The Associated Press some bodies were taken away for DNA tests. He did not say who would do the tests, but a law enforcement official in Washington said the FBI expected to conduct DNA tests to determine victims' identities, although Pakistan had not yet formally requested them.

Counterterrorism officials in Washington declined to comment on U.S. media reports that CIA-operated drone aircraft fired missiles Friday at a residential compound in Damadola trying to hit Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant whose videos have made him the face and voice of al-Qaida.

In Pakistan's strongest reaction, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed called the attack "highly condemnable" and said the government wanted "to assure the people we will not allow such incidents to reoccur."

After the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan to oust its Taliban rulers, authorities found a locker full of applications to join al Qaeda's holy war overseas.
Among the alleged applicants: José Padilla, the former ''enemy combatant'' who once lived in Broward County.

A prosecutor produced the alleged document for the first time Thursday in Miami federal court, where Padilla pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges that he was a recruit for a North American terrorist cell with South Florida links that aided Islamic jihad abroad.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Garber denied bond for Padilla, who had been held in military detention for about four years before his transfer to Miami to face a criminal indictment.

''It was recovered by U.S. personnel in late 2001 after the United States began bombing Afghanistan,'' Justice Department lawyer Stephanie Pell said, referring to Padilla's alleged al Qaeda application.

She added it was found among 80 to 100 other mujahadeen (holy warrior) applications found in the country, which harbored al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden before he masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. terrorist attacks.

''Several links in this case prove this is his document,'' Pell said after submitting it at Padilla's bond hearing.

Pell said Padilla's July 24, 2000, application was authenticated by a ''cooperating government witness'' convicted in an unrelated case who had once filled out the same Arabic ''mujahadeen data form.'' She said Padilla's date of birth, Oct. 18, 1970, was on his application along with his adopted Muslim name, Abu Abdullah Al Mujahir.
She said his co-conspirators and others called him ''The Puerto Rican,'' a reference to the American-born Padilla's Hispanic heritage.

Padilla's attorney, Michael Caruso, questioned the authenticity of Padilla's alleged mujahadeen application, saying there was ''no direct evidence'' he filled out the form.

The Huffington Post has learned the Bush administration recently asked high ranking military leaders to denounce Congressman John Murtha. Congressman Murtha has called for the Bush Administration to withdraw US troops from Iraq.

The Bush Administration first attacked Rep. Murtha for his Iraq views by associating him with the filmmaker Michael Moore and Representative Jean Schmidt likened him to a coward on the floor of the House of Representatives. When those tactics backfired, Dick Cheney called Murtha "A good man, a marine, a patriot and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion."
Though the White House has backed off publicly, administration officials have nevertheless recently made calls to military leaders to condemn the congressman. So far they have refused.

Rep. Murtha spent 37 years in the Marine Corps earning a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and a Navy Distinguished Service Medal. His service has earned him the respect of the military, and made him a trusted adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents and leaders of the armed forces.

Having ascended to the national stage as one of the most vocal critics of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha has long downplayed the controversy and the bitterness surrounding the two Purple Hearts he was awarded for military service in Vietnam.

Murtha is a retired marine and was the first Vietnam combat veteran elected to Congress. Since 1967, there have been at least three different accounts of the injuries that purportedly earned Murtha his Purple Hearts. Those accounts also appear to conflict with the limited military records that are available, and Murtha has thus far refused to release his own military records.

A Cybercast News Service investigation also reveals that one of Murtha's former Democratic congressional colleagues and a fellow decorated Vietnam veteran, Don Bailey of Pennsylvania, alleges that Murtha admitted during an emotional conversation on the floor of the U.S. House in the early 1980s that he did not deserve his Purple Hearts.

"Questions about my record are clearly an attempt to distract attention from the real issue, which is that our brave men and women in uniform are dying and being injured every day in the middle of a civil war that can be resolved only by the Iraqis themselves."

"I volunteered for a year's duty in Vietnam. I was out in the field almost every single day. We took heavy casualties in my regiment the year that I was there. In my fitness reports, I was rated No. 1. My record is clear."

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

In its "Transition 2001" report, the NSA said that the ever-changing world of global communication means that "American communication and targeted adversary communication will coexist."

"Make no mistake, NSA can and will perform its missions consistent with the Fourth Amendment and all applicable laws," the document says.

However, it adds that "senior leadership must understand that the NSA's mission will demand a 'powerful, permanent presence' on global telecommunications networks that host both 'protected' communications of Americans and the communications of adversaries the agency wants to target."

What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information.

But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.

I didn't know Hatch was so close to Alito's missus that he jumped in as her spokesman. Some separation of interests, eh? Some impartiality.

Unapologetically, I say this is all a big fat steaming pile of fly-infested horseshit. Alito knew the hearings were going to be an uphill battle. He knew it wasn't a slam dunk. And if you believe for one second that his own damned wife didn't know that, you're stupider than the coverage of this really bad drama.

What pisses us off is how many people ARE buying it, and how many will become sympathetic to Alito - and in turn, have disdain and disgust toward the Democratic Meanies who are ganging up on these poor sensitive people.

In other words, right out of the GOP playbook.

It's horseshit, it's horseshit, it is HORSE SHIT. Graham has absolutely no reason to apologize to Alito, other than to curry sympathy. And yet the Democrats are being painted as the ones showing no impartiality and have their minds made up going into this whole thing.

The GOP Playbook. Pages 15-22, 47, 102, 171-175 and Appendix XXVI. There's your slam dunk.

It's theater. Really awful theater at that. And the media are thoroughly enraptured by it.

President Bush made his first trip here in three months on Thursday and declared that New Orleans was "a heck of a place to bring your family" and that it had "some of the greatest food in the world and some wonderful fun."

Mr. Bush spent his brief visit in a meeting with political and business leaders on the edge of the Garden District, the grand neighborhood largely untouched by the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina, and saw little devastation. He did not go into the city's hardest-hit areas or to Jackson Square, where several hundred girls from the Academy of the Sacred Heart staged a protest demanding stronger levees.

Mr. Bush's motorcade did pass some abandoned neighborhoods as it traveled on Interstate 10 into the city.

"It may be hard for you to see, but from when I first came here to today, New Orleans is reminding me of the city I used to come to visit," the president told the local leaders at the Convention and Visitors Bureau, an independent group set up to attract business and tourism to the city.

Mr. Bush added that "for folks around the country who are looking for a great place to have a convention, or a great place to visit, I'd suggest coming here to the great New Orleans."

Mr. Bush, who appeared to be trying to spread optimism in a city that is years away from recovery, did not tell the group or the city's residents what many were hoping to hear: that he would commit the federal government to building the strongest possible levees, a Category 5 storm protection system.

Instead, on a day when the Bush administration revised the deficit upward to more than $400 billion and blamed it largely on Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush restated his support for spending $3.1 billion of federal money on building "stronger and better" levees.

Local engineers say those levees would protect against the 100-mile-an-hour winds of a Category 2 hurricane and the low barometric pressure of a Category 3 or weak Category 4 storm. Hurricane Katrina peaked as a Category 5 storm in the Gulf of Mexico and hit land as a Category 3 storm.

The president ignored questions about the city's new rebuilding plan, introduced Wednesday night to enormous community criticism, and White House officials traveling with Mr. Bush declined to offer opinions. The plan, which depends on nearly $17 billion more from the federal government, gives neighborhoods in low-lying parts of the city from four months to a year to attract sufficient numbers of residents or be bulldozed.

A "little-noticed provision" in the latest version of the Patriot Act will empower Secret Service to charge protesters with a new crime of "disrupting major events including political conventions and the Olympics." Secret Service would also be empowered to charge persons with "breaching security" and to charge for "entering a restricted area" which is "where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting." In short, be sure to stay in those wired, fenced containments or free speech zones.

Who is the "disruptor"? Bush Team history tells us the disruptor is an American citizen with the audacity to attend Bush events wearing a T-shirt that criticizes Bush; or a member of civil rights, environmental, anti-war or counter-recruiting groups who protest Bush policies; or a person who invades Bush's bubble by criticizing his policies. A disruptor is also a person who interferes in someone else's activity, such as interrupting Bush when he is speaking at a press conference or during an interview.

What are the parameters of the crime of "disruptive behavior"? The dictionary defines "disruptive" as "characterized by unrest or disorder or insubordination." The American Medical Association defines disruptive behavior as a "style of interaction" with people that interferes with patient care, and can include behavior such as "foul language; rude, loud or offensive comments; and intimidation of patients and family members."

What are the rules of engagement for "disruptors"? Some Bush Team history of their treatment of disruptors provide some clues on how this administration will treat disruptors in the future.

(1) People perceived as disruptors may be preemptively ejected from events before engaging in any disruptive conduct.

In the beginning of this war against disruptors, Americans were ejected from taxpayer funded events where Bush was speaking. At first the events were campaign rallies during the election, and then the disruptor ejectment policy was expanded to include Bush's post election campaign-style events on public policy issues on his agenda, such as informing the public on medicare reform and the like. If people drove to the event in a car with a bumper sticker that criticized Bush's policies or wore T-shirts with similar criticism, they were disruptors who could be ejected from the taxpayer event even before they engaged in any disruptive behavior. White House press secretary McClellan defended such ejectments as a proper preemptive strike against persons who may disrupt an event: "If we think people are coming to the event to disrupt it, obviously, they're going to be asked to leave."

(2) Bush Team may check its vast array of databanks to cull out those persons who it deems having "disruptor" potential and then blacklist those persons from events.

The White House even has a list of persons it deems could be "disruptive" to an eventand then blacklists those persons from attending taxpayer funded events where Bush speaks. Sounds like Bush not only has the power to unilaterally designate people as "enemy combatants" in the global "war on terror," but to unilaterally designate Americans as "disruptive" in the domestic war against free speech.

(3) The use of surveillance, monitoring and legal actions against disruptors.

Bush's war against disruptors was then elevated to surveillance, monitoring, and legal actions against disruptor organizations. The FBI conducts political surveillance and obtains intelligence filed in its database on Bush administration critics , such as civil rights groups (e.g., ACLU), antiwar protest groups (e.g., United for Peace and Justice) and environmental groups (e.g., Greenpeace).

This surveillance of American citizens exercising their constitutional rights has been done under the pretext of counterterrorism activities surrounding protests of the Iraq war and the Republican National Convention. The FBI maintains it does not have the intent to monitor political activities and that its surveillance and intelligence gathering is "intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to quell free speech."

Surveillance of potential disruptors then graduated to legal actions as a preemptive strike against potential disruptive behavior at public events. In addition to monitoring and surveillance of legal groups and legal activities, the FBI issued subpoenas for members to appear before grand juries based on the FBI's "intent" to prevent "disruptive convention protests." The Justice Dept. opened a criminal investigation and subpoenaed records of Internet messages posted by Bush`s critics. And, the Justice Dept. even indicted Greenpeace for a protest that was so lame the federal judge threw out the case.

So now the Patriot Act, which was argued before enactment as a measure to fight foreign terrorists, is being amended to make clear that it also applies to American citizens who have the audacity to disrupt President Bush wherever his bubble may travel. If this provision is enacted into law, then Bush will have a law upon which to expand the type of people who constitute disruptors and the type of activities that constitute disruptive activities. And, then throw them all in jail.

Kennedy is onto something... He knows Alito's fingerprints are in the CAP records, and at least one of those boxes down at the Library of Congress is a Pandora's Box.

I share the opinion that Alito's amnesia is an act. Alito is lying when he states he has no recollection of his relationship to Concerned Alumni of Princeton. I attended Princeton in the mid 1980s, and do not find it credible that Alito cannot account for why he listed his affiliation with CAP in his 1985 job application.

If Alito's name appears anywhere in the organization's records deposited at the Library of Congress, it will be completely at odds with what Alito has said under oath. But first, a word on the Republican's pre-emptive spinning...

Tom Coburn showed us a card today. From the way I heard his remarks, the Republicans are bracing themselves for fireworks if and when the CAP archive is actually opened. Whatever is in the boxes, it appears to be material dating from the mid 1980s, and the Republicans seem to know it. The Republicans are spinning Alito's relationship to CAP as Alito's concern for the possibility that ROTC might be not be allowed to recruit on campus in 1985. (This is the gospel according to Coburn. Alito was in ROTC as an undergraduate, ROTC disappeared for a while at that time, Alito was only concerned that ROTC might disappear again from campus, etc.)

1985? The year in itself should raise suspicions, and not just because it's the year Alito filled out his job application. If Alito was active in the organization around that time, I believe it was for another reason: to give CAP legal and strategic advice. I think this has everything to do with a 1984 scandal involving Dinesh D'Souza and a Princeton freshman. In March 1984, Concerned Alumni of Princeton put itself on shaky legal ground by printing details of a female Princeton student's sex life. Alito would have been a good person to turn to for advice on torts, and for dodging tort claims.

The [Prospect] story, "In Loco Parentis," charges the university with preventing the mother from withdrawing her freshman daughter, who it says is a minor, from school. It alleges that the university has promised to replace money denied the daughter by the parent with its own financial aid.

The article, written by the magazine's editor, Dinesh D'Souza, also discusses the young woman's sex life.

An editor's note states that the last name of the parent and daughter were changed "to protect the privacy of her daughter." But an accompanying article on a related subject, which refers to the circumstances of the other story, uses the student's real last name.

A woman with the last name used in the second article confirmed that those articles referred to her. She also said that Mr. D'Souza had tried to interview her, but that she had refused to talk to him because "Prospect has a reputation for twisting what you say."

In previous articles, the magazine had referred to the director of the Women's Center of Princeton as "the wicked witch of Princeton's Women's Center" and to an Hispanic assistant Dean of students as "señor."

In the case of the young woman, D'Souza said the name had been used in the second article because of "a proofreading error." He declined to go into details, but added:

"It's an honest-to-goodness goof."

This headline is pretty hacktacular even for Drudge:

[image snipped]

The headline states:

“ALITO WIFE LEAVES HEARING IN TEARS AFTER DEM ATTACK” and links to this Drudge write-up:

Judge Samuel A. Alito’s wife Martha left the confirmation hearing room in tears this evening, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) apologized to the Judge’s family for the behavior of his fellow committee members during the course of the last three days.

Sen. Graham said: “Judge Alito, I am sorry that you’ve had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this.”

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have attacked Judge Samuel A. Alito over his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton and his involvement in the Vanguard case.

One senior Republican in the hearing room said of the situation: “After three full days of attacks against her husband’s character, Mrs. Alito had enough. Democrat behavior during this hearing has not only been wrong, it’s been embarrassing. Ted Kennedy is nothing but a bully.”

I don’t like Kennedy. At all. I think Schumer is a grandstanding fool and a pompous ass. I think Patrick Leahy is as partisan as they get, and not to be trusted. But only the most patently dishonest person on the planet would claim that Mrs. Alito left after a Democratic attack. She left after REPUBLICAN Sen. Lindsey Graham was basically praising Alito, defending him and reciting some of the things that have been said about Alito.

But it was not a withering attack from Democrats which unsettled Mrs. Alito. Not at all.

I am so sick and tired of everyone just lying about every-damned-thing.

*** Update ***

Yes, I understand that the events of the day may have finally taken their toll on Mrs. Alito. But she did not break down after a withering attack- she started crying during Sen. Graham’s defense of her husband. Drudge is simply lying.

And that Drudge picture of Feinstein is, to my recollection, out of place. Feinstein, to my knowledge, never raised her voice, was the model of politeness, and even praised Alito for his equanimity. Did she ask some feisty questions? Yes. Did she ask (IMHO) some dumb questions? yes. But she was never vicious or mean that I remember. I did not see all of the testimony, but from what I did see, she was perfectly well-behaved.

The haunting question from the deadly mine disaster in Sago, W.Va., last week becomes ever clearer: Why did it take nearly 12 hours for enough rescuers to gather so they could attempt their first descent toward the 13 miners trapped with limited emergency oxygen? The explosion occurred at 6:30 in the morning in the rural Appalachian mine, as the work shift headed in. The first rescue team was not at the scene until 1:30, seven hours later. It had to wait for a second team, the backup required by law, and that could not be assembled from the far corners of the coal region until after 5:30 in the evening.

This devastating timeline is at the core of a detailed report by Ken Ward Jr., a reporter for The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, that questions whether some of the 12 fatalities might have been prevented by a faster, better-organized rescue effort. Signs of hope persisted for 10 hours into the tragedy, according to one desperate note found down below.

The emerging facts are not encouraging about the roles of government safety officers and of the companies that are so routinely allowed to dominate in running the mines, even down to the rescue effort at Sago. National requirements about maintaining readily available rescue teams have gradually been allowed to erode in the 29 years since the last overhaul of mine regulations. The law stipulates that at least two teams be at or near each mine; the reality is that this standard has slipped to where only one team is on hand for every four mines. The number of trained rescuers has dwindled alarmingly in parallel with the rise of mechanization and the reduction in the number of manned crews.

At the same time, vital positions at the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration have gone unfilled in recent years, inviting only further laxity on the part of companies that have been allowed to outsource their safety responsibilities to off-site contractors that are not subject to regular federal inspections. And the safety administration, which once maintained rescue experts at regional offices, now has them dispersed across the nation on the theory that they can be summoned fast enough to save lives.

Warning signs have abounded in recent years. Yet The Gazette found that a plan begun a decade ago to upgrade the mine rescue program was quietly scuttled by the Bush administration. The pro-company bias of the administration is itself a factor deserving full investigation if the inquiries now being promised are to have any credible effect.

Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.

President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.

But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.

"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.

The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.

"As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed."

The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."

Our enemies have no regard for human life. They're trying to hijack a great religion to justify a dark vision that rejects freedom and tolerance and dissent. They have a strategy, and part of that strategy is they're trying to shake our will. They kill the innocent. They kill women and children, knowing that the images of their brutality will horrify civilized peoples. Their goal is to drive nations into retreat so they can topple governments across the Middle East, establish Taliban-like regimes, and turn that region into a launching pad for more attacks against our people. In all their objectives, our enemies are trying to intimidate America and the free world. And in all their objectives, they will fail.

The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction, RAW STORY has learned.

According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department.

The Baltimore Pledge of Resistance is part of the national Iraq Pledge of Resistance, which works with the Baltimore Emergency Response Network and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) -- part of a national group committed to nonviolent civil resistance to stop the war in Iraq. The Pledge lobbies Maryland congressmembers via letters, phone calls, faxes, emails and face-to-face meetings; members of the group are periodically arrested for peaceable protests.

Documents turned over by the NSA indicate that the group was closely monitored. In one instance, the agency filed reports approximately every 15 minutes from 9:30 AM to 3:18 PM on the day of a demonstration at the National Vigilance Airplane Memorial on the NSA Campus in Maryland.

According to an NSA email dated July 4, 2004, the agency collected license numbers and descriptions and the number of people in each car and filed a report about them gathering in a church parking lot for the demonstration. NSA agents also logged their travel to the demonstration, including stopping as a gas station along the way. A canine dog unit was used to search a minivan when it was stopped on the way to the demonstration - nothing was found.

NSA officials even reported on the balloons being inflated for the demonstration and the content of their signs.

An entry made at 1300 hours on July 4. reads, "The Soc. was advised the protestors were proceeding to the airplane memorial with three helium balloons attached to a banner that stated, 'Those Who Exchange Freedom for Security Deserve Neither, Will Ultimately Lose Both.'"

On the day of the demonstration three protesters were cited for "disturbances on government property" and released. A federal judge eventually dismissed the case before trial.

China has resolved to shift some of its foreign exchange reserves -- now in excess of $800 billion -- away from the U.S. dollar and into other world currencies in a move likely to push down the value of the greenback, a high-level state economist who advises the nation's economic policymakers said in an interview Monday.

As China's manufacturing industries flood the world with cheap goods, the Chinese central bank has invested roughly three-fourths of its growing foreign currency reserves in U.S. Treasury bills and other dollar-denominated assets. The new policy reflects China's fears that too much of its savings is tied up in the dollar, a currency widely expected to drop in value as the U.S. trade and fiscal deficits climb.

China now boasts the world's second-largest cache of foreign exchange -- behind only Japan -- and is on pace to see its reserves climb past $1 trillion later this year. Even a slight diminishing of the dollar as a percentage of those holdings could exert significant pressure on the U.S. currency, many economists assert.

In recent years, the value of the dollar has been buoyed by major purchases of U.S. Treasury bills by Japan, China and oil-exporting countries -- a flow of capital that has kept interests rates relatively low in the United States and allowed Americans to keep spending even as debts mount. Some economists have long warned that if foreigners lose their appetite for American debt, the dollar would fall, interest rates would rise and the housing boom could burst, sending real estate prices lower.

The comments of the Chinese senior economist, made on the condition of anonymity because the government disciplines those who speak to the press without express authorization, confirmed an analysis in Monday's Shanghai Securities News stating that China is inclined to shift some its savings into other currencies such as the euro and the yen, or into major purchases of commodities such as oil for a long-discussed strategic energy reserve.

In a report circulated this week, Stephen Green, senior economist with the bank Standard Chartered PLC in Shanghai, identified several signals that China is intent on limiting its exposure to the dollar -- not least, a recent pledge from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange to "actively explore more efficient use of our foreign exchange reserves."

"We believe this adds to the downside pressure the USD [U.S. dollar] is currently facing," Green wrote. "It is the first official expression from SAFE that they are looking at switching away" from the dollar.

John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.

This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.

What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.

It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, "Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the 'war on terror’ than John Yoo."

This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

The audio of this exchange is available online at revcom.us

Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, "Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the 'Commander-in-Chief,’ no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished."

What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the President’s right to order the crushing of a child’s testicles?

This fascist logic has nothing to do with "getting information" as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world?

It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President's legal right to torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush administration policies, based on his legal memo’s, being equated to those during Nazi Germany.

Yoo said, "If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves against Al Qauueda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if you’re trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who committed atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too…I think to equate Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible."

Bracing for the worst, Administration officials obtained from the Secret Service a list of all the times Abramoff entered the White House complex, and they scrambled to determine the reason for each visit. Bush aides are also trying to identify all the photos that may exist of the two men together. Abramoff attended Hanukkah and holiday events at the White House, according to an aide who has seen the list. Press secretary Scott McClellan said Abramoff might have attended large gatherings with Bush but added, "The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him."

Abramoff was one of the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign's "pioneers"—meaning he raised at least $100,000, most of it from others, in increments of $2,000. After Abramoff pleaded guilty, Bush aides announced they had donated to the American Heart Association $6,000 that had been given to the campaign by Abramoff, his wife and one of his Indian-tribe clients. But Republican officials said they plan to keep the remaining $94,000. A Bush aide said it cannot be assumed that the other donors, who were simply recruited by Abramoff, have done anything wrong: "That's not a fair standard."

A fair reading of Alito's paper trail suggests a strong philosophical tilt in favor of bold Bushian assertions of presidential power. This conclusion is not based on the ideological assertions in Alito's now-famous 1985 job application when he was bucking for a promotion in the Reagan Justice Department: ''In college, I developed a deep interest in constitutional law, motivated in large part by disagreement with the Warren Court decisions.''

Instead, the smoking-gun document comes much later -- from November 2000 -- when Alito, then a federal judge, participated in a panel discussion sponsored by the Federalist Society, the mother church for conservative lawyers. In his presentation, Alito argued strenuously in favor of a hail-to-the-chief legal theory called "the unitary executive." (Note to readers: Relax, this won't be on the midterm.) Briefly, what this theory argues is that every part of the executive branch (including regulatory agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and, yes, independent counsels like Kenneth Starr) should be legally under the control of the president. While Alito himself did not mention national security in his speech, other proponents of this theory -- notably Dick Cheney's new chief of staff, David Addington -- have leaned on it to argue that a president can go beyond the law in carrying out his duties as commander in chief.

Ginsburg IS in the mainstream of judicial philosophy, even though she's clearly a strong liberal. But she never pretended to be anything else. And everything on Ginsburg's resume was something she was proud of. Every group she belonged to, every organization she worked for, every position she staked out on the issues of the day and every promise she made reflected who Ruth Bader Ginsburg was, what she stood for and what she believed in.

Did she insist you shouldn't read anything into her work for the ACLU? Of course not; she was proud of that work. Did she insist you shouldn't read anything into her activism over the years, her push for equality among the sexes? Don't be absurd. Did she break her word on solemn pledges made before the Senate? Never.

Nothing could be further from the truth for Alito. He is apparently ashamed of everything he's ever done. Alito boasted on an application for promotion in the Reagan administration about belonging to the racist, Neanderthal-ish Concerned Alumni For Princeton. Now he pretends he can't remember ever belonging to them at all.

Alito said he wanted to become a lawyer because he was so distraught about Supreme Court rulings that led to "one person, one vote," a cornerstone of our modern democracy. Now, he says we should ignore his consistent, persistent attacks on affirmative action.

Alito also cannily helped to devise the incremental approach to dismantling Roe v Wade that has been the very tactic the far right has used. Now Alito says to ignore all that.

Alito has repeatedly proven he believes the president is more like an emperor -- someone who deserves almost unlimited deference from the Supreme Court, especially during a time of war.

Finally, Alito pledged to the Senate that he would recuse himself under certain situations as a federal judge. He repeatedly broke that pledge. His excuses vary: he forgot, the computers shouldn't have assigned him those cases in the first place, he never HAD to recuse himself, and finally he never promised he would recuse himself forever. The reasons change, but the fact remains: Alito gave his word and then he broke it. He can't be trusted.

Since Alito is so clearly ashamed of himself, shouldn't we be ashamed of him and keep him off the Supreme Court?

Insisting that God "certainly needs to be involved" in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers today blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.

Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name.

"We did adequately apply oil to all the seats," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, who identified himself as an evangelical Christian and as president of the National Clergy Council in Washington.

Rev. Schenck called the consecration service the kick-off in a series of prayer meetings that will continue throughout the confirmation hearing.

Capitol Hill police said they weren't aware that the three had entered the hearing room earlier, but added that hearing rooms typically aren't locked because "they're not of interest to anyone." Lt. Dominick Costa said the Judiciary Committee room will be swept for bombs and perhaps for electronic bugging equipment before the hearing begins.

The three ministers insisted they weren't taking sides in the Alito debate. "This is not a pro-Alito prayer," insisted the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. With abortion, public prayer, gay marriage and right-to-life issues among those topping public debate, however, "God…is interested in what goes on" in the nomination hearing, Rev. Schenck said.

The two men, along with Grace Nwachukwu, general manager of a group called Faith and Action, read three Psalms outside the committee room, knelt to say the Lord's Prayer and marked a cross in oil on the committee door before leaving.

If Pres. George Bush broke laws when ordering wiretaps and secret spying on U.S. citizens, a key Senate Democrat said he would not rule out calling for his impeachment.

"I think there is an orderly and dignified way to find out what happened," said Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. "And, if there was a legal violation there needs to be accountability ... you can't put the cart before the horse, but I would not rule out any form of accountability."

That would include impeachment, Feingold told reporters.

Feingold, who is eyeing a run for president in 2008, was in Vermont Saturday to stump for Rep. Bernie Sanders, an independent, who is running for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Jim Jeffords.

The pair held a morning press conference before making stops throughout Vermont, including Brattleboro, where enthusiastic supporters packed the high school auditorium for what Sanders said was the first formal event of his official Senate campaign. The mid-day meeting drew supporters from New Hampshire and Massachusetts as well as throughout southern Vermont.

The senator, who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said in Brattleboro that committee chairman Arlen Specter has already scheduled hearings on the administration's surveillance activities, which will follow this week's confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Asked by a supporter whether there was a way citizens could impeach Bush "here and now," Feingold said he first wants to hear the administration's justification for conducting domestic surveillance before determining what, if any, punishment should occur.

Once that is known he said, there should be accountability. "I'm not going to prejudge what that accountability should be."

Twelve Americans were killed when a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Iraq early Sunday, the military said.

The helicopter, which was carrying a crew of four and eight passengers, was flying along with another aircraft between bases in the north of the country, according to news releases from the U.S. military.

Rescuers searched for about 12 hours, finding the crash site about noon (4 a.m. ET), some 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) east of Tal Afar. A military release described the area as sparsely populated.

The military didn't say whether any of the 12 dead were civilians.

Tal Afar is just miles from the Syrian border and has been a hotbed of insurgent activity and raids by Iraqi and coalition forces.

According to The Associated Press, 23 helicopters have crashed in Iraq since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Last January, a transport helicopter crashed in bad weather, killing 31 U.S. troops in the deadliest such incident.

The military also announced the deaths of five U.S. Marines in three different Iraqi towns Saturday and Sunday.

Insurgents in Falluja killed three Marines during separate gunbattles Sunday. Falluja is about 35 miles (56 kilometers) west of Baghdad in restive Anbar province.

On Saturday, roadside bombs killed two Marines, one near al-Karma and another near Ferris. Both towns are near Falluja.

Since the war began, 2,198 U.S. service members serving in Iraq have died. That total does not include victims of the Black Hawk crash.

"I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time," Cheney said. "The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."

“I’m encouraged by the tremendous results of the election,” he said, describing the poll which will deliver Iraq’s first full-term parliament since April 2003 as a “major milestone.”

“The new Iraq will become a democratic model for the Middle East.”

“I think when we look back 10 years hence, we’ll see that the year ’05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq,” the vice president added.

Companionship isn't dead. Go to MySpace.com or Facebook or Xanga or any of the other online sites where people leave messages on the home pages of their friends and you'll see these great waves of praise and encouragement. People visit their friends' pages and drop lovebombs. There's scarcely a critical word about anyone or anything in the whole social network. It's just fervent declarations of friendship, vows to get together soon and memories of great times gone by.

Some sociologists worry that we're bowling alone, but these sites (MySpace has 20 million visitors a month) are all about community. They're commonly used by people in the new stage of life that's been created over the past few decades. They are in their early to mid-20's; they're out of school but have no expectation they should marry soon. They're highly mobile, half-teen/half-adult, looking for a life plan and in between the formal networks of school, career and family.

So they bond online with an almost desperate enthusiasm. The Web pages they create are part dorm-room wall, part bulletin board, part young person's society page. They post photos of favorite celebrities, dirty postcards and music videos. And there are tons of chug-and-grins: photos of the gang gripping beers at a bar, photos of the tribe chugging vodka on the beach, photos of the posse doing shots at an apartment. Scroll down the page and there are people falling over each other, beaming and mugging for the camera phone.

To get the attention of fast-clicking Web surfers, many women have posed for their photos in bikinis or their underwear or in Penthouse-parody, "I clutch my breasts for you" positions. Here's a woman in a jokey sadomasochistic pose. There's a woman with a caption: "Yes, I make out with girls. Get over it" - complete with a photo of herself liplocked with a buddy.

The girls are the peacocks in this social universe. Their pages are racy, filled with dirty jokes and macha declarations: "I'm hot and like to party. Why have one boy when there are plenty to go around?!" The boys' pages tend to be passive and unimaginative: a guy posing with a beer or next to a Corvette. In a world in which the girls have been schooled in sexual aggressiveness, the boys sit back and let the action come to them.

On most Web pages, there's a chance to list your favorite TV shows and books. And while the TV lists are long ("The OC," "Desperate Housewives," "Nip/Tuck," etc.) many of the book lists will make publishers suicidal: "Books! Ha! Me! What a joke! ... I think reading's ridiculous. ... I don't finish books very often but I'm attempting 'Smart Women Finish Rich.'... This is what I have to say about books (next to an icon of Bart Simpson's rear end)."

The idea on these sites is to show you're a purebred party animal, which leaves us fogies with two ways to see MySpace.

The happy view is that this is a generation of wholesome young people building nurturing communities and the smutty talk is just a harmless way of demarcating an adult-free social space. The dark view is that these prolonged adolescents are filled with earnest desires for meaningful human contact, but they live in a culture that has provided them with no vocabulary to create these sorts of bonds except through cleavage and vodka.

Angry members of MySpace, the personal file-sharing website for young adults, are accusing Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation of censoring their postings and blocking their access to rival sites.

The 38 million subscribers to MySpace, which News Corp bought for $629m (£355m) last July, discovered that when they wrote to each other about rival video-swapping site YouTube, the words were automatically deleted, and attempts to download video images from YouTube led to blank screens.

The intervention by News Corp in the traditionally open-access world of the web - in particular the alteration of personal user profiles - provoked a storm of angry posts in online "blogs".

"This is soooo like Fox and News Corp to try and secretly seal our mouths with duct tape," wrote "Alex" to Blog Herald.

The protests gathered pace, and when 600 MySpace customers complained and a campaign began to boycott the site and relocate to rival sites such as Friendster, Linkedin, revver.com and Facebook.com, News Corp relented and restored the links.

However, MySpace managers promptly shut down the blog forum on which members had complained about the interference. An online notice said the problem was the result of "a simple misunderstanding".

[snip]

"MySpace is supposed to be a personal forum!" wrote "makisha" at the blog site Supr.c.iliu.us. "Now it's owned by some corporation and it's being sensored [sic]! The beauty of it has been ruined. Better wise up MySpace or you're going to loose [sic] a good portion of your subscribers."

A spokesman for MySpace said it would not explain how the blocking of YouTube came about, nor how it was resolved, nor whether in future it would continue to block links to rival websites or censor messages between MySpace customers.

A retired, 34-year-old city police officer who spent hundreds of hours searching for Sept. 11 victims at ground zero has died of respiratory disease related to the cleanup, union officials said.

James Zadroga, who retired as a detective from Manhattan's South Homicide task force in 2004, is the first emergency responder to die as a result of exposure to World Trade Center dust and debris, said Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives' Endowment Association.

"Although James is the first, unfortunately I do not think he is going to be the last," Palladino said Saturday.

Zadroga died Thursday at his home in Little Egg Harbor, N.J., officials said. Results of an autopsy conducted by the Ocean County (N.J.) medical examiner's office were pending.

But Zadroga had developed black lung disease and mercury on the brain as a result of working at ground zero, Palladino said. Zadroga spent 470 hours in the first month after the Sept. 11, 2001, collapse of the trade center in rescue and recovery efforts, working up to 16 hours a day at the site, Palladino said.

He developed shortness of breath and other respiratory problems in the months after the attacks, and retired on disability in 2004.

A majority of residents and ground zero workers tracked by several different registries monitoring the participants' health have reported worsening respiratory problems in the years since the attacks.

Zadroga, a 13-year veteran of the force, is survived by a 4-year-old daughter, his parents and a brother. His wife died of cancer in late 2004, Palladino said. A wake was scheduled Sunday and Monday and a funeral Mass on Tuesday in North Arlington, N.J.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, the White House instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available.

That finding is included in a report released Friday by the Office of the Inspector General of the EPA. It noted that some of the agency's news releases in the weeks after the attack were softened before being released to the public: Reassuring information was added, while cautionary information was deleted.

"When the EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was 'safe' to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement," the report says. "Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced . . . the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

On the morning of Sept. 12, according to the report, the office of then-EPA Administrator Christie Whitman issued a memo: "All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC (National Security Council in the White House) before they are released." The 165-page report compares excerpts from EPA draft statements to the final versions, including these:

The draft statement contained a warning from EPA scientists that homes and businesses near ground zero should be cleaned by professionals. Instead, the public was told to follow instructions from New York City officials.

A statement about discovery of asbestos at higher than safe levels in dust samples from lower Manhattan was changed to state that "samples confirm previous reports that ambient air quality meets OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) standards and consequently is not a cause for public concern."

Language in an EPA draft stating that asbestos levels in some areas were three times higher than national standards was changed to "slightly above the 1 percent trigger for defining asbestos material."

This sentence was added to a Sept. 16 news release: "Our tests show that it is safe for New Yorkers to go back to work in New York's financial district." It replaced a statement that initial monitors failed to turn up dangerous samples.

A warning on the importance of safely handling ground zero cleanup, due to lead and asbestos exposure, was changed to say that some contaminants had been noted downtown but "the general public should be very reassured by initial sampling."

The report also notes examples when EPA officials claimed that conditions were safe when no scientific support was available.